Unearthly that in a city this size, there are only a dozen allotment gardens and just over 120 community growing tracts.
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Is this just a question of space? Don’t bet your hoe on it. T.O. has hundreds of acres lying fallow, just waiting for guerrilla planters to sow their green beans. Dig here, folks.
1. Evans and Browns Line near Gardiner and 427.
The menacing concrete ramps of mid-20th-century progress look like flower petals from the sky, but up close the cordoned green spaces are neglected. Fields like this one in Etobicoke are easily accessed from regular roads, and the sight of tomato vines is much nicer than that discarded Tim Hortons cup you keep passing every morning.
2. Bloor and West Mall
Why’s nobody ever parked at this place? It must be a front. And it is! This modest dwelling with spartan landscaping is home to Toronto Hydro equipment and just wants to blend in. So why not give all that unused dirt a reason to be? And it’s is only a few blocks from West Mall’s garden-challenged high-rises.
3. Dundas and Kipling
The Six Points clusterfuck suggests a Pollock piece, a mess of unnecessary roads that render swaths of land completely useless. Well, almost completely. While the city slowly unravels this road pretzel, why not offer the vacant land to residents of high-density projects seen in the distance? Better yet, the city should just add “garden creation” to its conditions for approving condo projects.
4. Jimmie Simpson Rec Centre
Large indoor facilities, rink, tennis courts, baseball diamond and kids’ playground. It’s pretty much the standard mould for rec centre land use. Now it’s time to add community gardens to the roster. Only five community centres have growing tracts, despite the fact that there’s plenty of unused real estate on their edges. Community gardens should be the norm, not a surprising bonus.
5. Alley behind Queen at Dovercourt
The city owns odd little strips of land all over town. This was one. Now it’s another kind of dirty strip. Instead of plopping parking spots on these land clippings, the city should be alloting parsley plots.
6. Vacant lot near Logan and Danforth
Oh, how the residents fought for this TTC dirt patch. Now they can enjoy the proverbial fruits of their protest and walk the gravel path from one end to the other, taking in a line of shrubbery, some fencing and several large rocks. But why not enjoy actual fruit by converting this into a community garden?
